{"_index":"sire","_id":"916","_score":null,"_source":{"id":916,"authors_free":[{"id":1351,"entry_id":916,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":133,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Sorabji, Richard","free_first_name":"Richard","free_last_name":"Sorabji","norm_person":{"id":133,"first_name":"Richard","last_name":"Sorabji","full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/130064165","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":1352,"entry_id":916,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":122,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Tarrant, Harold","free_first_name":"Harold","free_last_name":"Tarrant","norm_person":{"id":122,"first_name":"Harold ","last_name":"Tarrant","full_name":"Tarrant, Harold ","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/132040077","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":1353,"entry_id":916,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":107,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Baltzly, Dirk","free_first_name":"Dirk","free_last_name":"Baltzly","norm_person":{"id":107,"first_name":"Dirk","last_name":"Baltzly","full_name":"Baltzly, Dirk","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1150414960","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"The Transformation of Plato and Aristotle","main_title":{"title":"The Transformation of Plato and Aristotle"},"abstract":"In Neoplatonism, though not in Aristotelianism, Plato and Aristotle are transformed in a variety of different ways. The transformation is partly driven by a wish to harmonize Plato and Aristotle, but only partly. There is less effort to harmonize the two in some commentators than in others, and on some issues, as we shall see, there is less harmonization among our commentators than there was in the Middle Platonism of an earlier period. Further, the transformation of views is driven by other factors besides harmonization.\r\n\r\nHarmonization is most marked in Porphyry and Ammonius. It seems to be least favored by Syrianus and Proclus. Simplicius says that the good commentator should find Plato and Aristotle in harmony on most points (In Cat. 7.23\u201332). The presumption for a Neoplatonist is that, in the case of disharmony, Plato will be right. However, this presumption is reversed by a late commentator, Olympiodorus, who backs Aristotle against Plato on the definition of relatives (In Cat. 112.19ff).\r\n\r\nAs an example of harmonization, Porphyry, on the standard interpretation, defended Aristotle\u2019s categories from Plotinus\u2019 objections in Enneads VI.1\u20133. Plotinus accepted only four of Aristotle\u2019s ten categories for classifying the world perceived by the senses, and even then with heavy qualifications. He complained that Aristotle\u2019s categories left out the world of intelligible Forms from which the perceptible world derived. Sensible qualities, for example, are only shadows of the activities of intelligible Forms. Porphyry replied (In Cat. 57.7\u20138, 58.5\u20137, and 91.19\u201327) that Aristotle\u2019s categories are not meant to be exhaustive. They are only intended to distinguish words insofar as they signify things, and words are chiefly used to speak about sensibles. For that limited task, the categories are to be valued. Porphyry thus made Aristotle\u2019s categories forever acceptable to Platonism. Hereafter, it became increasingly useful to reinforce what I regard as the myth of harmony in the face of Christian charges that pagan philosophers contradicted each other. There was an irony in this, because the harmonization\u2014whose motive was thus partly anti-Christian\u2014ended in the thirteenth century by helping Thomas Aquinas present Aristotle as safe for Christianity. This assimilation to Plato had turned Aristotle\u2019s God from a thinker into a Creator and Aristotle\u2019s human soul into an immortal one.\r\n\r\nThere can, however, be more than one approach toward the harmonization of Plato and Aristotle. Lloyd Gerson, in this volume, offers the most thoroughgoing modern attempt to argue that it is basically correct. If, as I have supposed, it is not, the question arises whether pressure toward a false harmonization would be bad for philosophy. Having to convince Christians that Plato and Aristotle agreed with each other on almost everything would surely lead to a loss of their wonderful insights. But in fact, it gave a distinctive character, interesting in its own right, to Neoplatonism. Curiously, it also led to an even closer reading of the texts of Plato and Aristotle, because their texts had to be read very closely indeed if one was going to argue that what they really meant was something different from what might first appear.\r\n\r\nIn fact, the pressure to harmonize proved a valuable stimulus to the imagination in the Greek Neoplatonist commentators. They took Plato to postulate a changeless and timeless world of divine Platonic Forms, and they had to think out how such a world would relate to the temporal, changing world described by Aristotle.\r\n\r\nI should now like to look at some examples of what happened to the views of Plato and Aristotle in Neoplatonism. I shall ask what factors besides harmonization are at work, whether Plato is transformed in the process as much as Aristotle, whether the harmonizations are hostile or friendly to Aristotle, and where the transformations proved important for subsequent philosophy. [introduction p. 185-186]","btype":2,"date":"2006","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/eWLLcrq58WWLfJm","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":122,"full_name":"Tarrant, Harold ","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}},{"id":107,"full_name":"Baltzly, Dirk","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":916,"section_of":196,"pages":"185-193","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":196,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"en","title":"Reading Plato in antiquity","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Tarrant2006","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"2006","edition_no":null,"free_date":"2006","abstract":"This important collection of original essays is the first to concentrate at length on how the ancients responded to the challenge of reading and interpreting Plato, primarily between 100 BC and AD, edited by Lloyd Gerson, University of Toronto; 600. It incorporates the fruits of recent research into late antique philosophy, in particular its approach to hermeneutical problems. While a number of prominent figures, including Apuleius, Galen, Plotinus, Porphyry and lamblichus, receive detailed attention, several essays concentrate on the important figure of Proclus, in whom Neoplatonic interpretation of Plato reaches it most impressive, most surprising and most challenging form. The essays appear in chronological of their focal interpreters, giving a sense of the development of Platonist exegesis in this period. Reflecting their devotion to a common theme, the essays have been carefully edited and are presented with a composite bibliography and indices.","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/PFetB36hpbaF0VD","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":196,"pubplace":"London","publisher":"Bloomsbury Academic","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["The Transformation of Plato and Aristotle"]}